The Department of Defense is looking for a few good hackers

The Defense Department is hosting a huge hacking competition in August to highlight vulnerabilities in the world’s growing network of “smart” devices — what is sometimes called the Internet of things. The contest, hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is designed to pit machine against machine in what DARPA calls the “world’s first automated network defense tournament.”

Smart televisions, wearable technologies and home appliances that can be connected to the Internet aren’t always designed with cybersecurity in mind. More important, critical connected infrastructure such as traffic lights, utility systems and power grids may be susceptible to cyberattacks, according to DARPA.To address these weaknesses, it may be necessary to automate the process of identifying and fixing software vulnerabilities, but the machines making the fixes must perform as well as human experts, DARPA officials said.